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Turning a Corner
Sorry for the silence here – it has been a very interesting few days. Today continued the interest factor in that I Got Out, on a long overdue Bikeventure outside of Cambridge. I have not been Going Out much at all since coming back from Denmark; at first to make sure I hadn't picked up anything on my travels, then once that period had elapsed I was just so used to being home that I didn't want to upset my equilibrium. On top of that is the knowledge that I do not have the best lungs in the world – I had pneumonia a few times as a kid, and even now I have to spend most of an ordinary cold in bed or I will be coughing for a month – so taking unnecessary risks is unwise. Should I catch The Virus, and have a bad go of it, nothing would give me priority in an ICU: No one is dependent on me, and my work, while fun, is hardly essential to society. That knowledge is a rock in the stream of life, which can only be flowed around.
So I was a happy little hermit crab, trying and failing to get my work done, until circumstances gave me a very good excuse to visit a village to the south of Cambridge, and I hauled my bike out of the shed for the first proper journey in a very long time. I was stiff, from spending the last three months at my desk. My bike was stiffer – I really should have given it the springtime overhaul yesterday, but thought sewing a face mask was a more important use of my time. Nevertheless, we pushed our way there, getting a nice big dose of countryside on the way. We're coming into full-on spring: there's a skylark in every field, the blossoming trees are at their peak, buds are swelling and there's a green haze on some of the shrubbery. The relative absence of vehicular traffic made the roads relaxing and allowed the birdsong to soar – such a lot of birdsong! I saw a few kestrels, including one showing off to a lady kestrel on the roof of the hospital, and a small flock of grey geese flew over the road at one point. Buzzards were out too, and jackdaws, and something white and sloping which I think was a tern. I heard my first chaffinch of the year, shouting into an empty garden. Life is good.
It was a little eerie how quiet things were, but only a little: as an introvert freelancer I usually only go out when Cambridge is at its quietest, either early in the morning or when everyone else is at work. To be honest I was surprised how many people I came across, getting their government-sanctioned daily exercise at midday on a Monday. Lots of cyclists, some runners (mainly closer to town) and dog walkers (in what will be a wildflower meadow, by the hospital). I was also surprised how serene the hospital seemed, though I was cycling along the research park side of it and couldn't see the frontline medical treatment building.
The oddest thing was seeing trains. Train service has been greatly reduced since the lockdown and is supposed to be for essential workers only. I was not expecting to see any at midday, but the last third of the route home runs along the train tracks into the station, and I saw three. Thinking of the drivers still at work in their mostly empty trains gave me a weird haunted feeling that none of the empty vistas had done. When will I next be on a train? It could be months.
Circumstance is set to give me a reason to make a return trip in a few days. I may be doing this route quite frequently in the coming months, if all goes according to plan. Getting some sun and fresh air is doubtless good for me, and doing so in the wide open South Cambridgeshire fields is probably better than a trip to the supermarket, which I have for the most part avoided. I will go about dressed for the Spanish Flu and hope for the best.
Photos are here – I'm too tired figure out how to embed them; I know I used to be able to ...
So I was a happy little hermit crab, trying and failing to get my work done, until circumstances gave me a very good excuse to visit a village to the south of Cambridge, and I hauled my bike out of the shed for the first proper journey in a very long time. I was stiff, from spending the last three months at my desk. My bike was stiffer – I really should have given it the springtime overhaul yesterday, but thought sewing a face mask was a more important use of my time. Nevertheless, we pushed our way there, getting a nice big dose of countryside on the way. We're coming into full-on spring: there's a skylark in every field, the blossoming trees are at their peak, buds are swelling and there's a green haze on some of the shrubbery. The relative absence of vehicular traffic made the roads relaxing and allowed the birdsong to soar – such a lot of birdsong! I saw a few kestrels, including one showing off to a lady kestrel on the roof of the hospital, and a small flock of grey geese flew over the road at one point. Buzzards were out too, and jackdaws, and something white and sloping which I think was a tern. I heard my first chaffinch of the year, shouting into an empty garden. Life is good.
It was a little eerie how quiet things were, but only a little: as an introvert freelancer I usually only go out when Cambridge is at its quietest, either early in the morning or when everyone else is at work. To be honest I was surprised how many people I came across, getting their government-sanctioned daily exercise at midday on a Monday. Lots of cyclists, some runners (mainly closer to town) and dog walkers (in what will be a wildflower meadow, by the hospital). I was also surprised how serene the hospital seemed, though I was cycling along the research park side of it and couldn't see the frontline medical treatment building.
The oddest thing was seeing trains. Train service has been greatly reduced since the lockdown and is supposed to be for essential workers only. I was not expecting to see any at midday, but the last third of the route home runs along the train tracks into the station, and I saw three. Thinking of the drivers still at work in their mostly empty trains gave me a weird haunted feeling that none of the empty vistas had done. When will I next be on a train? It could be months.
Circumstance is set to give me a reason to make a return trip in a few days. I may be doing this route quite frequently in the coming months, if all goes according to plan. Getting some sun and fresh air is doubtless good for me, and doing so in the wide open South Cambridgeshire fields is probably better than a trip to the supermarket, which I have for the most part avoided. I will go about dressed for the Spanish Flu and hope for the best.
Photos are here – I'm too tired figure out how to embed them; I know I used to be able to ...
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It has been far easier to hear birdsong in my city also. The robins and redwing blackbirds are having a field day.
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I'm also glad to hear that people in your part of the world are taking this thing seriously: I went out the other day to a doctor's appt and was surprised by how busy the streets are with cars: not on the sidewalk but just out in their cars. The streets and fwy were BUSY. Felt almost like a normal day, but like mid-morning.
We got a notice to "really for real you guys stay home" for the next two weeks (not even to go grocery shopping or to the pharmacies), so we'll see how that goes.
Enjoy your bike riding!
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Cars are a tricky thing, because you're going from your sealed home unit to your sealed vehicle unit so it's logically an extension of home – arguably a safer means, contagion-wise, of running essential errands than if everyone walked and was passing each other on the sidewalk (especially in LA where if you step off the sidewalk for distance's sake you risk death; here that's not such a problem). In Europe you CAN do your essentials on foot; in California there's always going to be a fair amount of traffic on the road even when people are doing the bare minimum, because even the bare minimum involves a significant amount of driving. Add to that essential workers who still need to commute, suppliers for the supermarkets and pharmacies, veg box and takeaway and Amazon delivery drivers, and yeah ... lots of cars. But not necessarily a lot of social mixing. The trouble comes when those cars are taking people from a place of seclusion to one with other people! Hence the UK gov't getting really upset about everyone driving out to nature spots with 10,000 other people who had the same idea.
I hope they gave you enough warning of the new rules to let you stock up! Or were they counting on everyone having panic-shopped already?
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Oh, and I'm considering doing a bread starter, but considering how hard up for flour everyone is at the moment, it feels a bit of a wasteful process....thoughts?
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That's a great position to be in! Well done for doing a proper inventory too. I have only done that on my stores box that is hard to get to, so I don't have to keep checking if that thing I thought I had is in it. (It isn't.)
Having made starter now I think you could get away with cutting the recipe in half, if you're worried about waste. At the point where the recipe said to discard half, I discarded it into a loaf leavened with dry yeast and it turned out gorgeous.
I was reading a thing about flour yesterday: Only a tiny percentage goes to the retail market, and the shortages now (in the UK anyway) are more down to an explosion in demand that the pipeline can't keep up with. It's not that the flour isn't there, it's just bottlenecked at the point where they put it in retail-sized bags, so they're talking about offering commercial-sized bags to 'enthusiastic home bakers' now. Like the panic buying, the bread making phase will decline in intensity, so if you're not hurting for bread now, give it a few weeks and it should be fine. By then you might know someone with a starter who would be happy to leave you some in a jar on your doorstep, and save you the trouble!